Jesse Owens was the hero of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He won four gold medals in track and field in what has come to be known as “the Nazi Olympics,” dominating the Games right in front of Adolf Hitler and his supposed master race.

Another athlete, whose success would have been just as humiliating for the Nazis, was never allowed to participate.

“I don’t forgive Germany for what they did,” a 102-year-old Margaret Lambert says in the opening of “Foul Play: The Margaret Lambert Story,” which premieres Thursday on the Olympic Channel, olympicchannel.com and on the Olympic Channel mobile apps.

“Never, never, never forget,” she says. “I don’t think anyone who went through this forgot and forgave.”

In 1936, Lambert, born Gretel Bergmann, was considered the best high jumper in Germany. She was a national champion that year and a favorite to win the gold medal. She was also Jewish. Days before the Olympics, she was disqualified from participating.

Sports and politics often collide today, most notably on football Sundays. But no sporting event is ever as politically charged as the Olympics. In 1936, that was certainly the case: Nazi Germany was not an ideal host for the Summer Games. With American athletes threatening to boycott, Germany staged a public relations mission to scrub the nation of hard-line Nazi propaganda, to appear as a kinder, gentler Germany. It was a sham, “a charade of inclusion,” according to the documentary.

Margaret Lambert, seen here in 2010 as a sports field was re-named in her honor at Francis Lewis High School in New York, is subject of new Olympic documentary.

(Seth Wenig/AP)

As part of this, the Jewish Lambert was invited to try out for the German Olympic team. She was competing in England at the time, but was called back home to represent her native country. The “token Jew,” her son says in the film.

When it was apparent the Americans and other teams would not boycott the Games, Germany immediately cut Lambert. The letter she received contained the salutation “Heil Hitler!” In blocking her from representing Germany, some believe Hitler sacrificed a good chance at a gold medal.

“I was not going to participate, but when I was told that they were naming the facilities for me so that when young people ask, ‘Who was Gretel Bergmann?’ they will be told my story, and the story of those times,” she later said. “I felt it was important to remember, and so I agreed to return to the place I swore I’d never go again. But I had stopped speaking German and didn't even try when I was there. They provided a translator.”

Lambert died this summer at her home in Jamaica Estates, Queens.

Her story is the first of three films that will air as part of the Olympic Channel’s original series “Foul Play.” The documentaries examine the dark underbelly of Olympic history and chart the intersection of the sports and social issues including religion, gender, and race.